Re: Rules

From: Paul F. Evans (evans@wilmington.net)
Date: Wed Dec 09 1998 - 07:47:48 EST


Carl,

Duh!!! ...as my daughter would say! I feel really stupid now! That is
perfectly clear. I was missing the word order, which, if I am not mistaken
is what created the thread in the first place!

Thanks for your obvious patience with an overworked and under achieving
pastoral Greek student. BTW, this is the problem with we pastor's we dabble
in it enough to get into real trouble.

Paul & Loala Evans
Wilmington First Pentecostal Holiness Church
E-mail: evans@wilmington.net
Web-page: http://wilmingtonfirst.churches.wilmington.org/

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu>
To: Paul F. Evans <evans@wilmington.net>
Date: Wednesday, December 09, 1998 6:46 AM
Subject: Re: Rules

>At 9:04 PM -0600 12/8/98, Paul F. Evans wrote:
>>Carl,
>>
>>Thanks for the reminder. I don't get to stay in the Greek text much and
my
>>experience investigating grammar is limited by the amount of time lost to
>>other pastoral duties that rob me of something love to do.
>>
>>>but you shouldn't ever see hO AGAQOS hO ANHR.
>>
>>
>>Still I am not quite satisfied with your statement. Your observation
about
>>Machen are correct,of course,and you quote him and his examples perfectly.
>>However, isn't the construction hO LOGOS hO AGAQOS exactly equivalent to
hO
>>AGAQOS hO ANHR, which Machen uses as an example of the attributive, but
>>which you say one should never see? (cf. # 70 and #72) He even elaborates
>>on this construction. I may be missing something simple, but I am
confused!
>>(which doesn't take much). I think my confusion is not really with the
>>attributive or predicative but with the perceived ambiguity.
>
>What you are missing is that in hO LOGOS hO AGAQOS the ADJECTIVE is what
>follows upon the second article, so that what we read amounts to "the
>word--the good one," whereas in hO AGAQOS hO ANHR the ADJECTIVE with the
>article comes first and is already a substantive = "the good person/thing
>(masculine)" and is then followed by a noun with article which might
>theoretically be equated as a predicate to hO AGAQOS but is not clearly or
>obviously thus equated. For instance hO AGAQOS could just as easily be
>referring to an earlier-mentioned ONOS which is masculine and singular and
>nominative, in which instance we'd have to understand hO AGAQOS as "the
>good one" specifically in reference to "the donkey"--but that couldn't
>equate with hO ANHR. The word-order is thus an important factor here: you
>can't have any necessary relationship indicated between an articular
>adjective and an immediately following articular noun, but an articular
>noun followed by an articular adjective of the same number, gender, and
>case must necessarily refer to the preceding noun.
>
>>Are you saying that in the real world of ancient Greek one is not going to
>>come across this, and therefore it is not an authentic possibility even
>>though theoretically it is possible? Have I muddied the water enough?
>>Good! Then I shall step back and let it settle out!
>
>I'm saying that IF you find this in the real world of ancient Greek, (a) it
>probably wasn't written by an articular native speaker of Greek, and (b) it
>wouldn't have any clear meaning to a native speaker of Greek. I realize
>that's a very strong assertion, but I believe it's true. Let me put it this
>way in an English example which is unnatural English but nevertheless, I
>think, intelligible: we can say "the red book" or "the book, the red
>one"--but we can't say "the red one, the book" and expect anyone to
>undertand it: the word-order doesn't indicate any distinct relationship
>between the prior "the red one" and "the book." Does that help any?
>
>Carl W. Conrad
>Department of Classics/Washington University
>One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
>Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
>cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
>WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
>



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